


What's Love Got To Do With It?

by asparagusmama



Category: Lewis (TV)
Genre: Community: lewis_challenge, First Person Narration, International Fanworks Day 2015, James really deserves a decent partner, M/M, bereavement, happy ever after, original character narration
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-14
Updated: 2015-02-14
Packaged: 2018-03-12 20:37:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 9,094
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3354488
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/asparagusmama/pseuds/asparagusmama
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>All the while James Hathaway was secretly, painfully, in love with his boss, little he knew he too was the object of unrequited love and desire, one lowly probationer who four years ago transferred to Traffic. Soon fate and a murder victim are to bring them back together. But of course, they’re not in love, love has nothing to do with it!<br/>Or,<br/>James deserves some happiness, a decent man who can love him for himself</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. It may seem to you/That I'm acting confused

**Author's Note:**

> It takes a long time to get to Hathaway, but please bear with the seemingly original fiction and police procedural, you need to know the type of man Hathaway is so absolutely not going to fall in love with!

I woke to the refrain playing over in my head yet again,

“What’s love got to do with it, love’s just a second hand emotion...” sang her voice along with Tina Turner’s,

Just a second or two before my alarm sounded. Then her voice faded into the beeps of my phone.

I sat up. Switched it off. Today was the day I got my life back. Life back on track. Doing what I loved. Shouldn’t I feel ecstatic, I vaguely wondered? But I just wanted to be half asleep though, hear her sing her favourite song...

“I met him at a Tina Turner concert, Wembley, he was so handsome...” she had said to me so many times in the last few weeks, sang it so much. She had talked so much in the last few weeks. Well, until the pain meant she couldn’t say much at all...

I had to pull myself together and stop wallowing. She would want me too. She was always brisk and practical.

So, autopilot took over though. Shower. Shave. Get dressed. Black trousers, white shirt, my decent Doc Marten smart shoes, on went the uniform jersey and clip on tie. I looked in the mirror and shook my head. 

I won’t be needing them. I’m finally back in leathers today. So I should feel happier. After eighteen months of working in that damn control centre, dropping PACE and the sergeants’ exams, dropping my life, after five weeks compassionate leave, four more in Logistics, I was back on the road. It’s all I wanted. Oh, I know other officers sneer at us, but I loved it. 

Traffic. On my bike. Stopping idiots killing each other.

So, switch back on to my autopilot. Keep calm and carry on. Stiff upper lip, don’t you know! Porridge. Toast. Tea. Today on Radio 4. I heard echoes from ‘The Dance of the Ice Fairies’ from the study and the piano, the same refrain over and over again. I looked through the door, breath caught in my throat, expecting her to be seated at her piano, to look up and smile at me. My vision raises, to the framed picture of her, held aloft, above the fireplace. The Black Swan. Beautiful. Before I ruined it all for her, of course.

 

*

 

I was always on the M40 or in the city, but now I was out on the A34, the A-road with delusions of grandeur, thinking it might be a motorway if only God or the Highway Agency gave it another lane each way. Articulated lorries with huge containers from Southampton docks thundering their way north, carrying everything under the sun to the Midlands and the North, often driven by grumpy old truckers competing with left-hand driven trucks from all over the continent, driven frequently by boy racers who claimed to only have four words in English, ‘I no under-stand’, even though they frequently knew far more than they would let on. The downdraft shook me as I patrolled, but the exhilaration of fresh air and speed on a frosty morning took all introspection away. But I still couldn’t smile, even after a few hours.

Oh, a professional smile, of course. The young woman over-taking while on her phone, she was so apologetic, hitching up her skirt and flirting in a hope she wouldn’t get a ticket. I gave her a stern talking to about that, how it would never work, as when you’re in traffic you see far too many mangled bodies caused by a split second’s inattention to the road to let anyone off. She apologised more, but wasn’t happy. Three points on her licence when she was a sales rep, of course she wasn’t.

My smile might have been a little bit genuine for the kids. The car was on the verge, a woman and two little ones in the back. I explained how it wasn’t safe, got them up the bank, held the toddler while she held the baby, talking about motorbikes until the AA came to her rescue.

A quiet morning though. I went up to Kennington, turned, went back down to Chilton, turned back again. The South Downs were beautiful on this crisp and cold day. I relaxed, back into it.

I had just gone over the Milton interchange went I clocked it. A red Renault 5, 30 yeas old if a day, doing 112 miles per hour, under-cutting a bus, which shouldn’t have been in the outside lane anyway. I put on the lights and went after it, but instead of pulling over to say sorry nicely and take his ticket, the idiot floored it, 120, 125, topping 127 miles per hour, the old car probably creaking and shaking with the speed. Other cars now moved out of my way as the idiot swerved the car in front, misjudged it and smashed into the raised embankment just short of the Abingdon South, bonnet crumbling like a concertina, boot door springing open. Both driver and passenger were obviously uninjured as they leapt out of the smashed car and legged it up the grassy bank. What total wankers!

I pulled up behind, got off and went to give chase, but paused for a moment, shocked. Curled up in the boot was a woman, covered in a blanket. I stopped to check her pulse. She was as dead as a doornail, as Dickens has it in ‘A Christmas Carol’. She was naked too, under the picnic blanket. IC1, dark haired, smeared make-up, eyes closed, no sign of any external injury, white as a sheet, flaccid, and stone cold. 

I ran up the embankment, calling it in as I gave chase. We were behind Steventon’s council dump; I could see the tips for the various items ahead below the rise, but no sign of the bloody perps.

My last thought was that I should have kept my helmet on.

 

*

 

I woke up to the throbbing of the side of my head, the feel of the pressure of a hand between my shoulder blades and a voice I recognised,

“Easy there big fella. Alright mate?”

It was Vikram Chauldri. We’d been in a car together for my first year in Traffic, before I got my bike. I sat up slowly and touched my head. Felt fine, if painfully. No blood, no boggy patches, not even much of a bump, but one hell of a bruise later, I suspected.

“Yeah. Bastard whacked me.”

“Can see that mate. Para meds on their way. You alright here for a bit?”

“Sure.”

I could see down into the road. A young woman officer was in high vis bright yellow, directing the traffic while two colleagues were ring fencing it off with cones. Bloody dangerous job, first on accident. People think we’re the Cinderellas of the police, but you try standing in a lane of traffic going at least 60 miles per hour with nothing but the uniform and bright yellow and see how you feel. A Merc interceptor was parked one side of the Renault, a Vauxhall Astra the other, Vikram’s car. My head hurt. I closed my eyes for a moment.

 

*

Must have been in a funk for a bit! Now the both lanes were closed, obviously there would be interceptors and traffic at the junction each way. Traffic backlog would be horrendous! More uniform had arrived, at least two more Vauxhalls, as far as I could see. There was now a transport and a van with officers in white and blue paper coveralls; bloody noddy suits, crawling all over the Renault. A Suzuki four by four was also parking up and a short blonde woman got out. I recognised her from many a fatal: Dr Laura Hobson. Vikram spoke to her and her voice carried up the embankment,

“I’m a pathologist, you know.”

“Yeah, doctor too, init. She’s dead, she’ll keep, but Josh is alive and I want him that way, okay Doctor?”

Vikram could get away with talking like that; he was a sergeant and probably planning taking his Inspectors’ anytime soon. Fast track, him. Me too, once upon a time.

Dr Hobson sighed and, slamming her plastic wrapped white noddy suit into Vikram’s hands, and tramped up to me.

“Hi. How are you feeling?”

“I’ve had better days.”

She did all the obs, asked if I’d blacked out, I said I wasn’t sure, she reassured me that the paramedic would be here soon, and went to attend the body. I sat, watching, all out of my hands. I wondered about the poor girl, the two boys who ran off. Did they kill her? Did they even know the body was in there? Had the stolen the car? They were young, eighteen at the most. She was in her twenties. The car was old, should have been scrapped years ago. If it was stolen, it was unlikely to be reported. Would you report your car stolen?

“Any distinguishing features Sir?”

“Oh yeah, there’s my girlfriend’s dead body in the boot!”

 

* 

A silver Citroen pulled up and a smart looking tall black woman got out. She talked to Dr. Hobson and the SOCOs, and then to Vikram, who pointed to me. She nodded in my direction, and then asked Vikram something else, then got back into her car to talk on the phone. As she was doing so another car pulled up, another one of ours, an unmarked silver Vectra. A tall, blond man in a dark suit climbed out. It was, oh God, it was...

I closed my eyes again...

 

*

 

It was five years ago, nearing six really, that I began my two years as a probationer at St Aldates in the city centre. I noticed him on my second day. Okay, I probably do have quite finely tuned gaydar, but with that elegant cut expensive grey suit, beautiful shoes, to say nothing of the make-up, he might have been waving a little rainbow flag as he went up the stairs as I went down. I stood and watched him go up, watching his long, long legs in that tight grey wool move around the stairwell as I watched. Notice me, he did not.

Of course, I was a gauche and naive idiot in those days, hormones on legs, and he was out of my league, out ranked and out classed, a CID sergeant. I looked for him in the canteen though, couldn’t help it. He was beautiful, in his skintight pastel shirts, a little of his finely tuned abs peeping out of the gaps between the buttons. His lovely yellow hair, short but always styled so beautifully. I used to take a guess on what he would do each day, Tin Tin, choir boy, stern public school head boy (which Julie told me he had been!), fifties film star glamour... how he could get such styles out of a basic short, back and sides was beyond me. But I’ve always been rubbish at hair; mine’s shaved down to stubble, practical under the bike helmet. I did get good at a ballet bun these last few years, as she got so weak with chemotherapy, but would not let her girls down, and Miss Cavanaugh, ballet teacher, could not have loose hair! It would never do...

I was never in love you understand. What did love have to do with anything? He was gorgeous. My gaydar turned out to be if, not off, then super efficient, detecting a man so far in the closet he might have been living in Narnia! And he was in love; you only had to watch his beautiful cat shaped pale blue eyes follow his grumpy Geordie guv to see that. Unrequited love, a painful thing. Not that I would know, of course, all unrequited lust is frustrating, extremely frustrating. I used to have fantasies about outing him, getting him to accept himself, show him there are better men out there than bad tempered heterosexual widowers nearing retirement. Inspector Lewis was now shacked up with Dr. Hobson, I had heard from Vikram, but back out of retirement...

 

*

 

DS... DI now!... Hathaway was talking to Hobson, who was finishing up. The black northern woman, his DS I realised, came up to him and all three looked up to me, just as a bike roared up. Nice one. Biker paramedics have powerful bikes. Need them. He got off, grabbed his pack and went straight for me. Nicely reasoned. I had a feeling we were in for an argument about fitness for duty. I’d only just got back on the road. I was damned well not going back into an office!

Okay, so I was knocked unconscious and then blacked out for a while soon after, but I’d not vomited, all my responses were fine, no slurred words or lack of comprehension. But everyone always plays it safe with an officer down, so he ordered me to the JR for a MRI and obs, particularly when he heard I was alone at home. Still, he saw no reason why I couldn’t be back in the saddle after 24 hours. He got up to give the news to Vikram and left me. I watched Hathaway approach the medic, obviously wanting to know if I was fit to be questioned. I observed him, couldn’t take my eyes of him to be truthful.

When I’d been at St Aldates he had been skinny, sure, but as I looked at him in his nasty, cheap, ill fitting back suit, white shirt and black skinny tie, he looked thin under the new, bleak clothing, really thin. Before one could imagine defined muscle in that lean flesh. He seemed to have a heated discussion with the medic, who obviously won, holding up two fingers to emphasise his point. Two minutes only. Hathaway made his way up the embankment to me, bags under his eyes, skin pallid, rough and sore, no sign of that immaculate grooming and make-up now.

“Hello. DC Cavanaugh, isn’t it?”

I nodded and regretted it. Ouch. I touched my sore head.

“I’m DI Hathaway. Can you tell me anything at all now about the driver? Was he alone?”

“ I radioed in as I was pursuing, it should all be logged,” I supplied helpfully. “Two of them. IC1. Young, about eighteen or nineteen. Jeans, one in a padded check jacket, one in a black jacket with a black beanie. Other one had dirty blond hair, not strawberry like yours, darker...” nice one, comment on his hair!

He looked at me oddly and squatted down. “Are you okay?”

“Might need some nursing by a gorgeous blond angel! Recommend anyone Sir?”

He scowled a puzzled little frown, barely a scowl at all really, if you weren’t looking. His eyes were so sad, sadder than they ever were before, he seemed naked too, devoid of all that lip gloss and mascara. His lashes were so pale; you could not see how long they were, unless you looked hard. I looked hard, believe me.

Not that way! Damn, I had a bang to the head; besides, the leathers can hide a multitude of sins.

“Tell you what Sir, you buy me dinner and I’ll tell you everything you need to know.”

“Constable!”

Shit. “Um, sorry Sir. Don’t know what came over me. Must be this head injury.

“Fine.” He stood, awkwardly, as if his back was stiff. His legs went all the way up! “The sooner you get to hospital the better Constable. I’ll send someone to get your statement later. Think you can deal with the identity kit?”

I nodded again. Big mistake. I threw up. On his shoes!


	2. You must understand/That the touch of your hand/Makes my pulse react

A&E was crowded but they were expecting me. The young probationer Vikram had sent to escort me left me as soon as I was shown into a cubicle with a bed. She looked about twelve; I felt a hundred and three, going on thirteen. ‘Buy me dinner!’ What the fuck was wrong with me? I’d not seen him in three or four years, and never spoken to him before. Didn’t stop him being gorgeous though, despite the pale, splotchy, skin and huge bags and his emaciated form. What was wrong with him? As I lay there, waiting for the doctor to check me over, I wondered more and more, thinking less and less about the man as gorgeous eye candy and more and more as a man who looked like all hope and happiness had been kicked out of him.

I know how that felt. Alone and lonely and lost. In the last few weeks, on my ‘compassionate leave’, after they all left me, my two half sisters going back to Australia and America respectively, taking my nieces and nephews with them, I had planned to do nothing but get drunk and have sex, but when I’d driven into Oxford the two gay pubs had seemed full of immature little boys, and when I’d driven over to Milton Keynes I’d felt as if I was from another planet. Flash, loud, teenybopper music and fit young men eyeing themselves in the reflective walls as much as each other. Don’t get me wrong; I’m not some fat, ugly thing to feel sorry for. True, I’ve not worked out like I used to, but I still did a bit on my rowing machine, and I hadn’t let my team down in the Dragon Boats that summer. She had insisted. I hired a wheelchair from the Red Cross and got one of the carers from the agency that covered my work shift to do over time but...

I know alone. That gut wrenching moment when my Mum came home and told me that the chemo hadn’t worked that time, that this was it. Two years, tops. My half sisters and my step father so far away, who else could look after her? Watching her waste away, first have to give up her piano lessons, so she could rest, then finally one class, then another, and finally all her ballet classes.

Didn’t stop the girls coming to her funeral, even the little ones, all turning up in the blue uniforms, leotards, tutus, little solemn faces, their mothers shaking my hand, kissing my cheek, hugging me, some of the dads too.

I closed my eyes as I heard echoes of Swan Lake. Odile and Odette, the last role as the principle before she met him, him of the dark laughing eyes and rough manners. He’d claimed to be a roadie to Tina Turner, but it turned out it was just to one of the supports. Two weeks and he left London and while she rehearsed the Nutcracker she grew sick and thin, then fat and tired, until she could no longer hide me. She always claimed I was the best thing that ever happened to her, but how can I be sure? Parents are meant to love you.

I didn’t think, I have a Dad somewhere, as my Dad was my first step-Dad, biker he was, checked out early on a foggy night. People need to learn to drive safely, especially bikers. He left me with a burning love of bikes and an obsessive need to keep people from dying on the roads. Honestly, psychiatrist’s field day, me...

I heard a whisper after a few months on my probation that DS Hathaway had been abused as a kid. I heard another rumour he was gay and nearly killed by some murderer, a transgendered psychopath. He probably needs that psychiatrist more than me.

Why am I thinking of him? I need to get over this crush. Man, it was years ago. Anyone would think he was the ‘one’. 

Not sure I’ve been in love, maybe, when I was a kid, there was this boy at rowing and scouts. He hated it all, his father had pushed him, was always hiding, trying to skip things, desperate for a cigarette. The others, many of them, always teased him. They knew him from school. I didn’t go to school, so I don’t know about that. I didn’t know the rules. I learnt them the hard way. Then hurt this beautiful boy along with the rest. 

Because I’m an idiot!

*

They kept me in. Mostly it was just that they were short staffed and I had to wait so long to be assessed, then hours more for the MRI, although they moved me to a sideward to wait, one with a proper bed. They fed me too, and the bed had TV, which helped. I’d waited for what felt like forever to get back onto the road and then this. Still, attacked by a suspect resisting arrest was not the same as crashing; they couldn’t stop me getting back out there!

I wondered again about those kids. Had they killed her? Or had they just taken the car without consent? When I’d checked the licence as it flashed past me and I’ve given pursuit it wasn’t supposed to be on the road, the last owner a woman in her eighties who hadn’t taxed or insured it for ten years.

After the MRI – I have a brain, amazingly! – I thought they would discharge me, but they detained me until the morning. Amazingly I slept!

 

*

“Oh what's love got to do, got to do with it  
What's love but a second hand emotion  
What's love got to do, got to do with it  
Who needs a heart  
When a heart can be broken...”

It runs through my brain again, she’s singing it, just out of reach, in another room, maybe she’s ironing, and she always ironed to contemporary music, saved the ballet and chamber music for more...

A cough. Someone is there. More sounds. The sounds of a hospital ward. I’m not even at home. I open an eye.

He’s looming over my bed, long, tall, skinny, pretty thing, face all serious and stern, making him seem far older than his thirty something years. 

I open the other eye and sit up. I cough and pull the uncomfortable hospital gown around me. “Inspector Hathaway, I wasn’t expecting...”

“I’ve come to take you home. You’re discharged, I understand?”

“Really, there’s no need...” What the fuck? Be still, my beating heart. There must be operational issues he needs to discuss!

“Probably not” he agreed wryly. “I looked you up, Constable Joshua Cavanaugh. There’s no one at home waiting for you, and you took quite a whack. We’ve caught them by the way. Charged them with taking with out consent, resisting arrest, and assaulting a police officer.”

“But not murder?” I asked, standing up. I pulled off the blue hospital gown and he looks, really looks, before his cheeks flush a delicious pink and then he turns, coughing. My uniform leathers are in the cupboard beside my bed and I dress as quickly as I can. “I’d love a shower,” I mutter. “Probably stink.”

“Oh no, you...” he turns, but the blush hasn’t entirely gone. He lowers his eyes, veiling them with his long, pale, eyelashes. He coughs and returns to our conversation. “Not murder, no. CCTV picked them up stealing it at the Chieveley services. The car belonged to a Miss Stuart, deceased, the estate sold it on to a Keith Churchill of Churchill’s Scrap Yard, Portsmouth...”

We’re interrupted by a nurse who, seeing I’m dressed, has come to give me a post head injury care sheet and get me to sign my discharge papers. I smile lazily at her, my straight cop act, and she blushes too. Really, this unshaved, stinky bike leather look obviously has its charms. I’d forgotten that, eighteen months in a call centre, with no free time to speak of. I glance and see DI Hathaway look a little puzzled, and more than a little annoyed. I walk towards the swing doors of the ward and hold it open for him,

“So, Portsmouth?” I prompt.

 

*

 

We get to my house in Abingdon in less than twenty minutes, which isn’t bad going for that time of the morning. I suppose most of the commuter traffic is was all going the other way, of course. He had updated me on the journey.

Interceptors had been scrambled from when I was down and the two lads had been picked up trying to catch a bus in Drayton village three hours after I’d been hit. But reading between the lines, all CCTV, DVLA, PNC and other force liaison had been done by Hathaway, alone, he’d not delegated a single thing – well, apart from the arrests. He’d even spoken to Miss Stuart’s executor himself. Churchill had been missing for 24 hours, and had been wanted for questioning by Sussex Police concerning a missing woman, Sally Parkin. He had been seen leaving a nightclub with her the day before. Wiltshire police picked up Churchill trying to hitch a ride at Swindon services. Sally Parkin was the poor, unfortunate body, but Churchill claimed he hadn’t killed her. He was sitting in a cell in Swindon, waiting to see who got him, Oxfordshire or Sussex. Hathaway wanted to complete the case, I could tell, but I thought, considering she went missing and died in Sussex they had a prior claim. But what do I know? I’m just Traffic. I deal with about a hundred times more bodies than MIUs, but there is little to investigate: bad weather, alcohol, stupidity, carelessness, animals on the road...

“Well...” he said awkwardly, after he’d switched off the engine.

“Well, I’m going to shower, shave and make breakfast. I can offer you all three...”

He blushed again. “Um...”

“Separately,” I added, with a grin. “I don’t think you’ve been home all night, have you? Sir?”

“Don’t. Please. Don’t.”

“Don’t what?”

“Call me Sir. It’s... not right. I’m not here as...” he trailed away and looked out of the window.

“Well, you do out rank me,” I said, at a loss.

He shook his head. Why on earth did he decide to pick me up at the hospital? Because he couldn’t delegate? Surely I was Abingdon Traffic Command’s responsibility anyway?

 

*

 

He wondered around the den and the living room, looking at the books, the photos, the paintings. In the study he stopped,

“You have a piano?”

“My Mum’s. Her house really.”

“Where is she?”

“Sorry. Was her house. Our house. I grew up here. Thought you looked me up.”

“Um, yeah... compassionate leave. The details were not on your file...”

“Breast cancer. She’d been fighting it for years. It’s why I dropped my sergeant’s exams and moved to a bloody call centre. Do you want to go first or second?”

“What?”

“Shower? If you don’t mind, I ache, I’d dying for one...”

“M’mm,” he nodded, his shoulders tense. What was this golden, beautiful man doing here, in my Mum’s study, in our house? I’d had dreams about him, long ago, but time moves on, doesn’t it? We grow up; get over out crushes and... and what?

“Come on, I’ll show the bathroom. I bet my shirts would swamp you, but since I started going through things I found all my step-Dad’s clothes in the attic. I’m sorting through all the clothes, hers too, and all ours as children, to go to charity. He was as skinny as a rake, should find something not too dated...” Really, he died when I was five? Why was I babbling like an imbecile? I turned and headed for the stairs. He followed.

 

*

 

We found a shirt in pale blue, classic, not too bad a fit, and I had packs of new socks and tight cotton boxers I’d bought at the weekend, for work, and I even managed to find him a new toothbrush. I felt stinky after a night in A&E but he was equally unkempt, and I felt it wasn’t a one off. Depressed? Did he not care? When I was at St Aldates he was highly groomed, and, well, beautiful, elegant and clean. Gorgeous. He was a shadow of his former self. 

Finally we were in the kitchen, I put on jeans and a checked shirt and my old hoody, no point in anything else, I wasn’t back at work until the following morning.

“I need to get back.”

“You’ve been at it all night, from what you said. Have breakfast. I make a mean porridge, or...” I opened the fridge, “I have eggs and some very tired looking mushrooms. I could fry them, do some toast?”

“Or a mushroom omelette?” he offered.

“I’m not very good at omelettes. My Mum used to make a mean one, but in the last weeks all she wanted was porridge and soup...” I tailed off, looked away.

“I’m sorry,” he said quietly. I believed him.

He made a mushroom and cheese omelette. As we ate he let me talk about her as much as I needed, I guess. I wouldn’t let me think there was something noble about what I did though, throw away my career, or at least put it on a back burner, delay it, something anyway.

“I had to, I had to do my duty. I ruined her life, I had to make it up.”

“You did it for love, of course you did.”

“There was no one else.”

“I look around this house and I see a family home full of love, full of joy and happiness. She didn’t resent you, if she did, why have your sisters?”

“Well, she fell in love again, I suppose. Maybe...” I sounded uncertainly. Was she in love with my father? Dad, yes, that is, my first stepfather. As for my second, opposites attract I guess, they were chalk and cheese, the geek and the artist... What had love got to do with it indeed?

“She loved you and your sisters. I can tell. The house is full of it. Believe me, I can see something you wouldn’t find at my parents’ house...” He sounded bitter, hard, hurt.

“Of course she loved me and my sisters, it’s what parents do.”

“Is it?” he looked down, he seemed to be struggling to compose himself. Why did he pick me up at the hospital? Why had he stayed? He looked up again, his face more still. “You’ve been in Traffic too long,” and he smiled, to show a joke. I had my standard two years so I knew the kind of domestic he was referring.

“Okay. I was lucky. And I owed her. My sisters have emigrated, my little one went out with her father to the States when he got a job, she’s married out there now, and my other sister and her husband went to Australia. There was only me, so...” I shrugged. “I could be an inspector too by now.”

“I’m not criticising you, I, er...” He looked lost, like he wanted to say something but was at war with himself. I guess now he had thought of an appropriate quote and was worried I’d take the piss. But he didn’t know me either.

“More tea?” I asked briskly, changing the whole uncomfortable business.

He shook his head. “I must get back. Loose ends to tie up. Could you come in this afternoon to the station and give your statement and ID the arrestees.”

“I have my own paperwork, reports, I’ll email you from my nick, surely?”

“Sorry, of course, only you mentioned dinner...?”

I suddenly grinned from ear to ear. Someone pinch me, I must surely be dreaming! “I did,” I said slowly.

“Only, I think you should be buying me, let’s get this started correctly.” He blushed again and looked down. Like that, I thought, you’re old an old-fashioned role-player, are you? I picked up his hand and caressed it, his hands were soft, his fingers long, the tips not so soft, hard and callused, he played the guitar. Yes, I knew that. Gossip again. It felt electric though. He looked up, a little surprised confusion on his face, before he moved his thumb out of my grasp and caressed the back of my hand very tentatively, a smallest ghost of a smile on his lips. I felt a little shiver. So much from the smallest of touches, and not the usual, it’s not like he was turning me on so much as I felt, I don’t know what. I put my other hand on top of his. He shivered slightly and looked surprised, before he looked down again.

“It’s a date,” I said firmly, surprisingly, the way I felt, my voice should have shaken.

He nodded, very awkwardly and stiffly, looking absolutely bloody petrified.

“I’ll email you,” I repeated.


	3. One month on: I've been taking on a new direction

I was never sure if we could yet call what we were doing dating or mates. I took him out that first night to a lovely Spanish place I knew in Abingdon. Tapas, paella, slow roasted lamb and far, far too much wine. He stayed over.

But not like that!

And boy, he was going as far home as he was concerned, regardless of the amount he’d drunk. We almost rowed.

“You’ve had far too much, I can’t let you drive back.”

“It’s my career if I get caught, but I’ll be fine.” He was determined; I could see it in his eyes. He started walked to his car. I followed.

“Give me the keys.”

“No.”

“You’re not driving. Not on that much booze. You’re way over the limit. So I am I or I’d drive you home.”

“It doesn’t matter, I’ll be fine.”

“Of course you won’t be, Inspector, sure you’ll get suspended if breathalysed. But you also might kill yourself, or someone else, on the A34...”

“I’ll drive through Radley. I went to Radley College, you know, knew that road like the back of my hand.”

Supposed to impress me, was it? “From your Dad’s car, maybe. Sir, you’re drunk and over the limit and I can’t...”

“Don’t call me Sir!” he snapped angrily.

“Don’t make me arrest you,” I said calmly.

He looked at me and then handed me the keys, looking rather frightened.

“I can call you a taxi, walk you to the bus stop, or, if you just relax James, I have a five bedroom house, take your pick of any room you like, except my Mum’s. I’m not expecting you in mine, I promise. Scouts honour.” I held up three fingers in true scout fashion. He relaxed and huffed out a small, awkward laugh.

“Fine. You win.” He then spent the whole weekend with me, buying what he needed at Tescos, and helping me finally start to sort through all those clothes, books, belongings, a lifetime of collecting and hoarding. Every picture we had ever drawn, every story or essay we’d written, all our project books. I can’t describe the emotions, the feelings, but he was there, by my side, not judging, not commenting, just there, calm and understanding. We were home educated, you understand, not only was I seeing how much Mum loved us and was proud of us, I was seeing a history of my own development. We did a box each for my sisters, and he didn’t say a word when I couldn’t get rid of any of mine. Nor, when it came to it, I couldn’t yet get rid of her clothes, or my Dad’s, that she had kept those twenty-six years since his death. Some clothes still smelt of him, after all those years. There is nothing so evocative as the memory of smell to take you right back to being a toddler, being held in his arms up high. When the tears came James held me tightly, with no comment or judgement. I could see the priest he might have been. It made it so easy to take things at his slow pace.

And what a slow pace it was. He was lodging with the White Friars off St Giles, so if we met we invariably came to my house. It explained some of the fear and reticence too. He seemed to lack friends among his colleagues or out of work too. The band he’d been in he’d given up during a sabbatical, when he had failed to go on a pilgrimage. I was raised in the C of E, Mum played the organ at our church, we did Sunday School and Youth Club, although I dropped it a lot sooner than my sisters. But with family support, no one told me I was going to hell because, just like my sisters, I fancied boys. The Catholic Church is a whole different thing.

We soon started spending nearly all our free time together, but with shifts if wasn’t so much. His clothes and books began to slowly be left behind. Soon he was with me every evening we weren’t working, one of us cooking, curling up on the sofa watching crap. After a week of this he crept up closer until he put his head on my sofa, like a cat, or maybe more a puppy, uncertain, wanting psychical contact, unsure where it would take him, whether it would hurt. I put my arm around him, but didn’t ask for more. He snuggled into me. After a while of cuddling on the sofa he said,

“I can’t fall in love with you. I’m in love with Robert Lewis.” It was dark, the TV was off, and neither of us had felt like getting up to switch on the light. The fire was lit, but it was almost out, just a red, muted glow up lighting my Mum as the Black Swan, held high in the air.

I’m not stupid! “I know that. What makes you think this is love, anyway? What’s love got to do with anything?”

“Love is all...”

I waited for the poetry, even the theology, but no quote came, instead he said sadly, and slowly, as if he were saying out loud for the first time, “I couldn’t help but love him. He made me love him. He was my rock. He taught me to love myself-”

By now I knew James enough to take issue with this, but I kept silent.

“-Yet he never wanted me. He has no idea, you know, how much I love him. He’s happy, with Dr. Hobson; she’s what he needs. Not me.”

“Maybe I need you,” I said quietly into the darkness.

He said nothing but tightened his hold on me and buried his face in my chest.

 

*

A couple of weeks later the house was still resembling a jumble sale, boxes and bags and piles of clothes, books and a lifetime of bric-a-brac over every surface but the sofa, coffee and kitchen tables. It was a Wednesday, but I had the day off, as I was on the rota to do a weekend late shift. James had managed to get the afternoon off in lieu of all his all nighters, I supposed. He came in and dumped his laptop and jacket, mostly quite at ease now. 

“I’ve been thinking.”

“About what?”

“All this stuff.” He waved an arm about.

I folded my arms. “It’s not easy for some of us, you know. I know you think I’m a sentimental horder, but this is my Mum’s life and...”

“Why do you think it’s easy for me? Because I have no happy memories, is that it?”

Shit! “James, I didn’t mean that, I meant...” I meant that he had got rid of his belongings twice over, to go into the Seminary, and to go to Spain. I hadn’t questioned why, assumed it some spiritual purity I could never hope to aspire to. “I meant not all of us have your detachment.”

“So I’m cold hearted and distant now?” his voice was cold, his eyes narrowed.

“No James, spiritual detachment, like the Buddha says...”

But he stormed out.

I found him in the bottom of the every overgrown garden. I’d done nothing in it for two years, and my Mum hadn’t been well enough to for years before. We had a veg patch here once, I thought abstractedly as I went up to him. He was smoking. Mum used to smoke here, over looking the Ock. Not only cigarettes either, but all police officers have to make compromises, and one doesn’t arrest one’s mother for possession. It hurt, seeing him, shadowed by the willow and the apple trees, tall, willowy himself, smoke curling. If his shoulders had been narrower, his hair longer...

Whoa! How Freudian was that?

“I’m sorry James. It’s just hard for me.”

“I’m the one to apologise. I know what you mean. I never had many happy memories to associate with things. It was so easy to get rid of all but a few belongings when I went into the Seminary. But the year before last, I got rid of it all, everything but my guitar. I couldn’t get rid of my baby,” he huffed a gentle, self-depreciative laugh. “But so much was associated with him, with Robbie Lewis, and it hurt, I wanted to cling on to it, remember so many times that shirts or ties or books or CDs could make me think of...” he shuddered. “Sorry. But it was all a sin. He needed to be free of me and my damned feelings, and I needed to purge out...”

I wanted to comfort him, reach out to him, but I hated Robert bloody Lewis right then and I hated his religion even more. “A sin. Is that what you think? Then why are you here, with me, a sinful person? And why, for fucks sake, are you doing this to me? God knows I need a friend right now, but I have friends, good ones, but I had hoped, wanted... You know what it feels like!” I suddenly shouted. He flinched, his eyes widened in shock. He had never seen me lose my temper. “You went through it for ten years! How can you inflict this hurt on someone else?”

He looked stricken. “I’m sorry,” he said quietly, ashamed. “I never meant... I need time... I didn’t wanted to... Oh fuck!” He flicked his cigarette away in the overgrown undergrowth and took a step towards me, put his hands on my face and kissed me.

*

I must have had the patience of a saint, as from that first kiss things didn’t move much further for ages. Cuddles on the sofa included kisses, we kissed hello and goodbye, and when he stayed he still went into the box room, the spare room, the room that had never been anything but a dumping ground and guest room, apart form the few years of my second step-Dad’s failed business, when he sent himself up as a consultant. It had been his ‘office’ then. Now it was James space, a hanging rail for his clothes, a bookcase for his books and CDS as the migrated from St Giles, one at a time, sometimes two by two. His guitar. All his belongings in one small room. No wonder he couldn’t understand me.

We were curled up on the sofa about four or five days after our row, our first kiss, when James went back to what had started it.

“That day...” he began.

I tightened my hold on his. Was a mistake, I feared him saying. Wanted to move on to the next stage, I hoped. But he said neither. “Go on,” I said.

“I know you do want to clear it out. You told me, your Mum wanted you too, regretted she hadn’t been well enough herself.”

“It’s my life, I lived here until I was nineteen, came back for Sunday dinners, nursed my Mum, it’s...”

“Your house now. She wanted you to make a fresh start. Make it yours.”

“In my head, it’s only a third mine, my sisters should be entitled to it.”

“Why? They don’t even live in England. They have husbands, children, homes, you’ve shown me enough pictures.” He looked at me and grinned, pulled away and turned, bring up his long legs and sitting, cross-legged on the end of the sofa, looking at me. His eyes had that wild look that I had learnt to associate over the past few weeks as James getting up and going back into work, that eureka moment on solving a case.

“Sorry to have bored you.”

“No, that’s not what I mean... Josh, do you really, really want to live your life surrounded by half sorted boxes and piles of your Mum’s past? If you need them to be here, I understand, in which case, let’s put them in the attic, and clean your Mum’s room and lock the door.”

“You make me sound nuts.”

“No, no Josh. No.” he picked up my hands and held them in his. “I didn’t mean...”

“And if I can let go... Look, I do want to, but it seems so cold and final, like I never really cared. I know it’s illogical but...”

“I had this idea. I know the idea of just carrying them to charity shops and the dump feels cold-blooded, I can understand that, but we could sell them. Give the money to charity if you like, a cancer charity.”

“What like, Ebay, that just drags out the pain. I’d thought of that.”

“I could do all that for you, but my idea was something different.”

“What?”

“A car boot sale. You’ll see who is buying everything, if you don’t think your Mum would have approved, you just say no. A while ago I drove here from Culham –” that murdered French scientist, I thought, though it turned out to be accidental death covered up in the end, James had completed the paperwork for CPS that morning, perverting the course of justice and a dozen other offences, “-and I saw a sign by the river, massive car boot sale every Sunday. We could do it together.”

I thought about it. “Could work. But, it’s so hard...”

“There’s time. Doesn’t have to be the next weekend we’re both free. Anytime.”

“I could give money to cancer research and some to this biker charity, in Dad’s name. It’s an international charity, bikers do outreach and counselling with kids who’ve been abused, make them know not all men are scary perverts. Used to volunteer for them myself. Dad would have liked that...” I stopped, and looked at him, sensing something, something awkward. His shoulders were hunched and he was biting the edge of his thumb. “James, are you okay?”

“M’mm h’mm,” he nodded awkwardly, curling into himself more.

“It’s a good idea, this car boot sale, let’s do it, the next sunny Sunday,” I said quickly.

“Are you sure?”

“Could do with a hug,” and so could you.

The hug turned to kisses and without me leading in anyway, James was suddenly tugging at me, pulling me down on top of him. After a while, I was forced to ask,

“Wouldn’t we be more comfortable in bed?”

James pulled back from me a little. Damn! “It’s been a while,” he said flatly.

“And ‘a while’ is opposite to ‘a bit’ in that strange English dialect know only to James Hathaway is it?” I asked.

He grinned sheepishly, “I couldn’t possible comment.”

“Because you told me you rowed ‘a bit’, but then I found out you not only rowed for the Oxford police team but you were in the winning Cambridge team of the boat race back in ’98. So I’m assuming, Mr. ‘pining for unrequited love before he was almost a priest good Catholic boy’, ‘a while’ quite possibly, stop me if I’m making assumptions here, is quite possible, well... never.”

James looked away, blushing slightly, but also smirking in an amused but embarrassed way.

“So, not stopping me. No contradiction then. James Hathaway, are you a virgin?”

“I really, could not, possibly, comment.”

“You have no right to silence here, you know, if you don’t mention now something I might later find out, while questioning, in bed, I might have to...” and here, my metaphor broke down as I contemplating holding things against James, in bed...

“Um...” He nodded, took a deep breath, and said, “Bed? I think you might have to question me at some length,” to which the only possible reply way,

“What do you know about lengths, have you been peeking?” to which, of course, he dissolved into almost hysterical giggles...

 

*

 

I never have any luck. James getting a shout at just gone four in the morning rudely interrupted our first night in bed was just so bloody typical.

“I’m coming too,” I said immediately.

“What?” James asked, stumbling as he pulled on his pants.

“You’re way over the limit, the amount of Scotch you tucked away last night.” He’d needed a little Dutch courage after all that.

“Fine.”

Then we discovered that he’d forgotten to top up the tank in his haste to get home to me after he’d completed the CPS work.

“Bike,” I said. He looked at me as if I was mad, but I was already fetching the spare helmet. “Your sergeant can drive you after that,” I reminded him.

He looked sick with fear, but I realised it wasn’t the bike. Well, they had to know sometime...

 

*

We arrived within ten minutes, Fox Crescent near to the Thames, cars, vans and blue flashing lights were everywhere, a white SOC tent over the body at the bottom of a garden of a normal semi. I skimmed through the cars and pulled up right in the drive, next to the Citroen I had seen at the other crime scene. His sergeant’s, Lizzie Maddox I now knew she was called. Two officers approached us, looking stern, DS Maddox behind them. Their faces, when James removed his helmet, were priceless.

“Sir,” Maddox said neutrally, but her face was a picture. I took my helmet off and, for the sheer hell of it, grabbed him and kissed him, not anything deep and sexy, you understand, just a goodbye.

“Bye darlin’,” I said, grinning. James gave me a ‘you-are-so-fucking-going-to-pay-for-that’ kind of look, before obviously changing his mind and smiling at me. he had such a ‘just fucked’ glow about him I was amazed he wasn’t lighting up the crime scene. His sergeant was certainly noticing something. So was the pathologist, standing at the garden gate. I prayed James didn’t notice her noticing us.

“Don’t know when,” he replied, and then turned to Lizzie. “Right, what have we got?” he asked.

I was about to put my helmet on when of the uniform officers turned to me and said, “Josh. You so of a bitch! Vikram said you got a new boyfriend, but I never guessed in a million years you could melt the ice queen! So, we gonna have a CID presence at Gay Pride next year?” Ben Bradshaw was the chair of the GPA Pride Committee, Oxfordshire GPA were massive sponsors of Oxford Pride, the city’s one that is, not the university’s private, posh, Screaming Spires bash.

I shrugged. Baby steps, I thought. “Dunno. Lay off him, yeah, I didn’t mean to out him.”

He punched me on the arm lightly as I put on my helmet. “You look after him, yeah.”

“Always,” I said, and I hoped I was allowed to. He’d certainly been looking after me.


	4. Three months later: You must try to ignore/That it means more than that

I was shit scared, not word of a lie. Whenever James had gone to dinner at his old boss’s house I’d declined, well, I’d not been invited, well, not since I took James to work, then Dr. Hobson always included me. But we kept our social lives apart. Although I was working on James to come to the Dragon Boats with me, or at least Abingdon Rowing Club. Generally James went alone every few weeks to chez Hobson-Lewis, and I either had a quiet night to myself, or went to Vikram’s, although Vik and his wife Shreela always invited James too. But it seemed that Lizzie and Laura had threatened to tell Robbie if James didn’t finally do it. I was amazed when he confessed.

“You’ve not told him about us?”

“Not yet, I don’t want him to hate me, he doesn’t know, I’ve never told him, not really, and...”

“Stop babbling James. You never babble, that’s me, remember, love! Is this DI Lewis an idiot?”

“Of course not!

“But he never noticed you’re gay.”

“Well...” James shrugged and looked down. I hugged him and held him tight, stroked his razored, fuzzy hair.

“He won’t change how he feels about you, and you know he’d never going to feel any different, either, is he?” not going to love you back, in other words.

So, I felt sick as the day I had that concussion that brought us together. Might even have been in danger of being sick on his shoes again. He found me surrounded by shirts, jeans and chinos spread out all over the floor and bed. He picked up the black jeans, black tee with some abstract Metal design on it, cheap from Primark that tee, and my red check shirt and red converses.

I shook my head. “Boots. We’re going on the bike, remember.”

But I felt so sick with nerves. It was as close as meeting the future in-laws as I was going to get. James decided to ride, and I rode pillion for a change. As we got off I saw the curtains twitch and suddenly DI Lewis was at the door, looking much older than I remembered him, saying something scarky to James about being a biker now, but I couldn’t hear what. I was to learn later that they communicated almost entire in jibes. I followed, feeling even sicker.

“Hi,” gushed Dr. Hobson, Laura I suppose, “come in. James, come and introduce us all. He’s not said a word, you know.”

We all went into the very tasteful living room. Robbie looked up at me, expectant.

“Robbie,” James said, “this is Josh.” He took a deep breath, so did I; I think Lizzie and Laura did to. “He’s my boyfriend. I’m moving in with him.”

Lizzie, Laura and even Lizzie’s husband as well as I all let out those breaths we’d been holding in, waiting for yet another lie, half-truth, or evasion that hadn’t come.

Robbie’s smile was so genuine, he looked so happy for James. There was no doubting the love he had for James, just not, unfortunately, the type he wanted. Which might be fortunate for me. But of course, we’re not in love. Love has nothing to do with it... We just need each other. It’s only logical, what’s love got to do with it?

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to babyklingon for taking over the other prompt and all the encouragement with this. Thanks too to Rob (MajorDaiko on livejournal for more encouragement). I really didn't think this was going to get done, it's not as I originally planned, it lacks the research I would have liked, it also lacks a beta so if anyone spots a typo or grammatical error I won't be offended if you point it out :)
> 
> It's born by the sadness and awkwardness of DI Hathaway of Season 8 and wanting him to have someone to love him as much as he'll always will love Lewis. That, and way too much Emergency Bikers, Police Interceptors and Treaffic Cops on daytime TV as BK and I curl up on our sofas too ill to do much else!


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